Stray Hawkeye

So I’ve been batting this one around in my head for a while, and then I read this article (very, very hyperbolic and one sided,  but still fairly informative none the less), which set me off a bit to finally write this up.  The idea (really sort of 2 ideas together) still definitely has issues, but it’s at least something to think about.  This one’s admittedly equal parts idea and rant, and parts are half joking, though also half not.

Now, in an ideal world, politicians would actually care about representing the views of the people who they are supposed to represent. No US Senator from Minnesota would vote for a bill unless he thought that the people of Minnesota would support it. No Minnesota State Congressman would vote for a piece of legislation unless he thought that the people in his specific district would support it. They would do frequent opinion polls among the people they represent (not national polls) on relevant issues.

However, I think we all know that not how things work. If a drug company promises some money to a campaign in exchange for slightly stricter intellectual property laws, it will probably go through. If the head of the TSA has a side business that has clients that sell body scanners, we’re told we need body scanners in every airport to stay safe. If the steel industry wants higher tariffs to make higher profits to have more money to donate to politicians, the circle of political life goes on.

While there are many, many groups I can give money to as an individual in order to try to elect a given politician, there’s not much I can do to influence him/her after the election until they start making campaign promises the next time around. In short, while companies and interest groups can influence politicians while in office, the average citizen only really comes into discussion around election time.

So, here’s my idea – political bounties (for clarity, so I don’t have the FBI knocking at my door, I’m referring to bounties on laws getting passed/repealed, not on politicians’ heads). Now you may be saying, wait, you want to just buy laws? Well, yes. It basically works that way now for companies, I just want to be more blunt about the government representing the money rather than representing the people. Aside from that, as it stands, companies don’t just have the same rights as individuals, they have more rights.  While an actual person can only donate up to a specific amount of money, corporations basically can spend whatever they want.  I’m just proposing equal rights here.  However, the real key to this idea is that the bounties are only awarded to a politician (or more specifically their reelection fund) AFTER they accomplish what the bounty is for, and that they will be for very, very specific changes.

For instance, I think it’s stupid that I can’t buy beer on Sunday in Minnesota, and I’d like to see that changed. I don’t care which politician introduces the legislation, or what party they’re from. I just want to be able to go grab a bottle of wine for diner on Sunday. So, if this were all set up, I would start a political bounty for legalizing the sale of alcohol on Sunday in Minnesota, and I would contribute a few dollars. And anyone else who thought it was a good idea could also contribute a few bucks. The key here is that the bounty continues to sit and grow until someone introduces a piece of legislation that passes to change the law. No one gets the money until the law is changed.  Basically, we shift the focus for individual campaign contributions from campaign promises to realized results. This would also work for non-incumbents, they could take out loans to campaign on, and pay them back when they got some results and got bounties (or not get elected and go bankrupt I suppose).

Another sort of complimentary idea for this would be that we shut down all direct campaign contributions. Instead, each citizen is allocated $100 (arbitrary number, adjust as you see fit). The $100 comes from tax money, so actually the rich are contributing way more, and the poor way less, but they all get equal say, thus leveling the field some across economic groups that way. Also, I say allocated rather than given because you don’t actually get this money, this money is held by the government and you instruct them (probably via a form on some website) on which campaign to contribute it to and how. This could have a short list of options, such as making the contribution conditional on specific campaign promise being fulfilled. For instance, $50 to Person X unconditionally, and $50 split equally among all politicians who vote to repeal the Patriot Act, if the repeal succeeds. You could also contribute it an interest group, who could then use it to advertise about a specific issue rather than for a specific politician. The key here is that this would be the only money they would be allowed to use. This would help to make it so the government represent (or at least plays to) the people instead of corporations, and it would give all citizen equal say in their government (or again, equal influence over the election).  Politicians would be strictly banned from using any other funds in their campaigns.

The obvious problem with this part, is that you basically have to limit free speech in order to keep companies and rich people from buying their own advertising. And it sort of presupposes that elections are decided by how much advertising you can do, rather than what people actually think, which gets a bit to the heart of the issue that most people know almost nothing about politics, but are still responsible for choosing politicians. In order to make it manageable, you would also have to limit the list of conditions that you could apply to your contribution. Maybe you could make it so the $100 can be payed out at your will throughout the elected politician’s term?

There’s also the elephant in the room that any change like this would have to be put in place by, you guessed it, politician.  And we’ve already covered where they currently get incentives from.

Ugh.  Politics makes my head hurt, and make me nauseous. This is why I haven’t had much on here about it for a while, and will probably continue that way for a while.

What you have 3 days after you shave a Snuffleupagus.

The shiba inu puppy cam is back with a new litter of fuzzy little balls of cute:

Online TV Shows by UstreamIf that doesn’t make you smile and melt a little, you need help.

If the embedded video doesn’t work, try here.

Via Cute Overload and BoingBoing. Previously featured on Stray Hawkeye with the previous litter here.

In an effort to keep this blog one step cooler than your grandmother, I made a Facebook account for Stray Hawkeye, located here (let me know if the link doesn’t work, it should be visible to everyone).  Okay, so it’s possible your grandmother is still cooler, but I’m trying here.

There’s not much on the Facebook page yet.  Like basically nothing.  However, I do have a couple ideas for it when I get some time, and I’ll point it out here when I get those set up.  More organizing a couple of events and that sort of thing than moving any actual content over there.

On the off chance you were one of the people who came across the page I had set up on Facebook for the site before, I deleted that one because a few things weren’t set up the way I wanted and it wouldn’t let me change it.  Sorry about that.  You can fan the new one now though.  And I think (not sure) that you can share photos and links and stuff on it too.  Again, let me know if you have trouble.

Also, as you may have been able to tell from my last post, I set up a YouTube channel for Stray Hawkeye as well, located here.  I know the video quality isn’t particularly great – they were all taken with the video mode on my seven or eight year old digital camera, which is old enough that having video on a camera was a pretty cool new feature.  Plus, I don’t have a lot of experience with shooting video, so basically what I’m saying is that they’re about what you’d expect on YouTube, minus the really horrible comments sections full of hatred and typos, at least so far.  I have a few ideas for some more videos, but admittedly they’re near the bottom of the priority list and will be pretty time consuming, so they might be quite a while.

This was going to be a brief little post of a couple of things from the Orange Bowl / Miami trip.  However, instead of being brief and little, it somehow got really, really long.  I thought about breaking it into a few more little posts, but I figure at this point most of you are probably sick of hearing about my vacation, and it’s already close to a month after the fact, I so I figure I’ll get it all out of the way here in one last post on the subject.  Some topics covered – compare and contrast Iowa fans and the locals, tangent on advertising, pictures of some Hawkeye fashions, a lengthy deconstruction of fan turn out / ticket sales for the two teams, various non-dino game pictures, and some videos I took along the way.

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The contrast between the Hawkeye fans the the natives of South Beach was both awesome and hilarious (to me at least). (Note that this whole description engages in huge, broad, sweeping generalization to try to illustrate the point, there’s lots of exceptions, but we’re going for a general feeling here.)

South Beach and it’s residents seem to see themselves as (and may well be, I don’t keep track of these things) the center of fashion and stylishness for America and possibly the world.  They’re all very, very well dressed in whatever the latest style is.  At the same time that this would probably make them noticeable anywhere else, in South Beach, everyone is so in tune with the latest fashions, that they all end up looking basically the same (at least to my uncultured eyes).  It’s almost like there’s a dress code / uniform for the whole area, which probably changes about every two weeks.  They also seem to tend to be very fit (and dress to show it (or maybe cover it up where lacking)) and very tan.  I also don’t usually tend to notice plastic surgery, but wow, plastic people everywhere in South Beach.  There was also the highest concentration of Ethiopian refugee grade skinny girls that I’ve ever seen in one place.  Like walking skeletons in mini-skirts.  Super gross, but still trying to show it off.

In addition, it was also *by Miami standards* really cold while we were there.  Highs around 60-65, and lows around 40.  Yeah, I know, it was about 5 (above) when I got on the plane to go down, there was frozen puke (New Year’s morning) at the bus stop on the way to the airport.  But 40’s are apparently near record lows for them.  The natives were bundled up, in layers and layers and layers.  Sweaters, stocking caps, gloves, the whole bit.

They also all seemed to be rather serious and self-conscious.  Not in an unconfident way, just a being very aware of how they look and how others are looking at them.  And, perhaps because we were in an area pretty heavy in shops and restaurants, so lots of service industry people, they tended to all be in their 20’s and 30’s.  Though that could be the plastic surgery talking.

In contrast to that were the Iowa fans, who I love.  Totally on vacation, and caring about fashion and style even less than Mid-westerners normally do, which is already basically not at all.  Tigerhawks and “IOWA” on every shirt, fuck Dolce and Gabbana – our defense would kill them both, whoever they play for.  T-shirt stretched over a beer gut and stained jeans?  Sounds like an outfit to me.  XXL t-shirt on a XL frame and athletic short?  Let’s head to the beach!  It’s not that Iowa fans look bad by any means, it’s just that by and large, they couldn’t care less about designers or the latest trend.  Especially when on a vacation that centers around a sporting event.  And they’re not necessarily unfit (though, I would say on average we’ve probably got 25-50 pounds on South Beachers), but fitness for us is centered around being able to do the job at hand (usually farming) even if there is some padding over the muscle, rather than centered around looking toned at the beach.

To sum up the fitness part, I noted a few times from looking at the size and build of the Iowa fans and at the locals, that if a fight were to break out between the Iowa fans and the locals, every dollar I have or could borrow would be on the Iowa fans, and I’d gladly take 2 to 1 odds on that.

The Iowa fans also skewed more towards the 40-ish and 50-ish age range.  I would assume because that’s more of who has the resources to be able to fly down to Miami for a quick vacation.

So, needless to say, seeing the two groups mixing and passing on the street while you sat and ate was one of the more entertaining things on the trip (aside from the game of course).

The really weird part is that both groups have this same air of pride about them, but at the same time, a totally different form of it.  South Beachers have a sort of pride in appearance and their own perception of their social place at the forefront of culture and fashion.  Iowans I have a harder time analyzing, since I am one, but sort of a pride in being strong, independent, resilient, tough, caring, good people.  A sort of hereditary German pride in some sorts.

Anyway, an interesting compare and contrast while you’re sitting at a sidewalk cafe eating pizza and watching people walk by.

Now, on to some pictures.  First, this was still up in the Minneapolis airport when I flew out on the first:

Though Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Tiger Woods when he started hitting the news (and stationary objects such as trees and fire hydrants), apparently airport ads are on a bit of a slow rotation.  Also, all of their Tiger Woods posters went from sort of “eh?” to being downright insightful.  Someone also pointed out the new Accenture ads to me after I mentioned this.  Perhaps it’s just me, but when I first saw this one, I saw a rather small, blurry version like below, from a bit of a distance, and I thought to myself, “Why would they want their image to be a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica?”  That makes no sense, and I’m pretty sure there is no part of that which is the image they want to get across.

Then I realized that it’s not a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica.  Rather, it’s a bi-pedal, hunchbacked elephant on a surf board riding a crappy wave.  Because that makes waaayyyy more sense.

Anyway, back to Miami.  We were walking on the beach, and my sister pointed out this great shot:

What’s that?  It’s just a bunch of hotels on the beach you say?  Ah, look closer…

Now, I also generally think it’s sort of weird and creepy to take random picture of people you don’t know, but sometimes you just see things that are too awesome to resist sharing.

And, hell, while we’re being creepy and posting some of my favorite fan apparel (which I’m now also noticing is probably a fair example of my above statements about Iowa fans and fashion and the cultural difference with the locals, especially, especially the second one below), here’s two more.

What more can I say?

The team buses were also styling:

Now a couple of pictures which illustrate as clearly as one can the distribution of fans for the game.

Admittedly Exhibit B was taken a little while before kick off, but Exhibit A was during the game.  And here’s the seating chart for the game:

As you can see, each team’s athletic department is responsible for selling out about a quarter of the stadium.  This ensures some revenue for ticket sales for the bowl, and makes sure it feels like each team has a side.  These seats are indicated in grey in Exhibit C to illustrate that they’re not available through the Orange Bowl website, just through that team’s athletic department.  Now you may be saying, “Wait, Iowa left that many seats empty in their section?  No way!!  Well…, I guess it is a long trip, and it’s a recession and all, and they might have had their hopes up for the Fiesta…”.  No. No. No.

We were sitting in section 414.  Let’s orient those pictures for you:

The Iowa sections was full.  Maybe not quite 100%, but at least 85%, and probably closer to 90%.  Plus there were lots of Iowa fans like myself who bought tickets in the neutral areas between the two (the colored seats in the above pictures).  In fact, basically all the fans in the neutral areas were Iowa fans.  Not exaggerating, probably 85% of the fans in both of the neutral corners were Iowa as well.  Granted, those sections weren’t completely sold out, but they were pretty well populated.  This means that Iowa, the traveling/visiting team, with no particular tie to the Orange Bowl (the ACC does have a tie in with the Orange Bowl), sold out at least half of the stadium, and probably more like 60-65% of the seats.  Now you’re saying, “So, Georgia Tech must have sold out the other 35-40% seats?”  No.  Not at all.  See Exhibit A.  In fact, let me clarify Exhibit A a bit with…

So, Georgia Tech was tasked with selling, at minimum, 25% of the seats IN A BCS BOWL GAME.  In the picture above, I’ve circled a couple not so small holes in that 25% of the stadium.  And mind you, this was DURING THE GAME.  It’s not like these holes filled in when people came in from tailgating.  They stayed like that the whole time.   And then, there’s the elephant in the room, and it’s not even on a surf board this time.  What are those black bits?

Those are huge black tarps that were covering the upper half of basically all of the upper Georgia Tech sections.  I have no confirmation on this, but I would assume that their purpose is to make it less apparent to a TV audience that the stadium was not sold out.  This would make sense given the fan concentration just below these tarps, and the fact that they’re almost all in the Georgia Tech dedicated seating area.  Which means aside from the gaping holes circled in red that are sparse to empty, that not one single ticket was sold in the black tarp sections for the ACC CHAMPIONS to see their team compete in a BCS game BEING PLAYED THE NEXT STATE OVER.

As best I can tell, the tarps cover about 15 rows, and they’re over 14 sections, and each row is about 25 seats wide.  That means that by a back of the envelope calculation, that there were 5,250 seats under tarps in the Georgia Tech section.  Aside from that, there’s the holes in the lower section, the club level seating (the blue seats) are about 50-50, and the upper section outside the tarps is about 60% full.  So, let’s say that when we balance that out that Georgia Tech sold about half of the tickets in their quarter of the stadium, and we add in any stragglers they had in the rest of the place.  So, that puts us at around 15% of the tickets.  To Iowa’s 60-65%.

This is why I love my Iowa fans.  And why we always get invited to a bowl game one better than what our football team’s record would otherwise merit.

Anyway, the band was looking good, with the usual HAWKS formation:

As well as a new one that I hadn’t seen before.

We always talked about wanting to make a Tigerhawk while I was in band, but it never happened because we weren’t very good at big, field wide curves while I was in, and that’s basically all a Tigerhawk is.  Have you ever tried drawing one free hand?  It’s impossible to get it right.  Drawing a perfect circle free hand would be easier.  But the band seemed to pull it off pretty well.  Hopefully it will become a mainstay of the pre-game show.

And a few pictures of the post-game festivities:

And I quite like that last one, so I played with it in GIMP (free PhotoShop) a little bit, and squared it up to look more straight on, and cropped out the rest.

You can click on the image to get a bigger version of it.  It would make a great desktop background.  On every computer you touch.  Just saying.

I also tried taking some video while I was at the Hawkeye Huddle and at the game.  Random fact – the Orange Bowl has only ever had two occasions on which teams did their own pep rallies before the game, in 2003 and 2010.  Both times it was Iowa.  Apparently we’re the only team that does Hawkeye Huddles or equivalents.  So, on that note, here’s the Hawkeye Marching Band playing the short version of On Iowa at the Hawkeye Huddle from about half way back in the crowd:

A clip from Thriller:

I have no idea why that has become a sort of band tradition now. They play it all the time. The only reason I can think is because the dance is kind of fun to do. And it pisses me off to no end that they play it after the third quarter of games instead of Hey Jude. But don’t get me started on that, or any of the many other HMB traditions that Kevin Kastens and Myron Welch have combined to destroy.

Deep Breath.

And here is a full version of Hey Jude:

Ah, that makes me feel better.

And a small chunk of the series as the band marches out. Admittedly probably the most boring clip of the bunch. I was expecting them to march out through the crowd, but they went out through the back of the stage. Probably makes a lot more sense, but not quite as entertaining to watch.

And I did a quick 360 panorama of the crowd at the end of the Hawkeye Huddle to show about how big it is. This was right at the end, so people were starting to filter out:

And, the last few plays of the Orange Bowl, starting with a Georgia Tech 4th down, then an orange Gatorade shower (a little early) for Ferentz, a few kneel downs, and the starting of the post game celebration, with a bit of In Heaven There Is No Beer in the background:

I heard a while back (about a year ago, because, yes, I am about that far behind on some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog about) that Intermedia Arts, a local arts group/space/organization, was closing it’s gallery and laying off all of it’s full time staff because they, and the arts in general, were being hit particularly hard by the recession, and it was the only way to stay afloat.  From their website, it looks like they’re back in their space and hosting things again (admittedly I haven’t followed it all that closely), but I would tend to imagine selling art and managing galleries still isn’t exactly a booming enterprise as the moment, and that both artists and galleries are probably still squeezed pretty tightly.

Another fairly visible symptom of the recession that I’ve noticed is that there are lots more empty store fronts than usual.  Businesses close, and they leave their spaces empty, and it takes a bit longer for property owners to find someone else to rent the space.

So, putting two and two together, there are empty store fronts that look vacant and depressing, seem to be magnets for graffiti, and which are drawing no rent, and you have galleries closing and artists with no places (or less visible places at least) to sell their work or get it in front of people.  So, the free idea for this week is to set up some sort of organization / program to connect property owners and artist to display works in the front windows of empty store fronts until the space gets rented again.

Here’s a few reasons why I think this particular match up would work well for everyone.  First from the artists’ perspective:

• Your work is put in a place people are used to looking at to buy things and it gets it in front of people who may not generally go to galleries.  It’s not only a sales outlet, it’s advertising.
• In this idea, there wouldn’t be any active curator working at the store, just a locked store front with art in the windows and number to call if you wanted to buy something, or an email address, so the fees/commissions would be notably less than you would usually pay to galleries.  Also with the cheaper space and more of, there would be potential for many more artists to get exposure than usual.

From the property owner’s perspective:

• Though the rent may be notably less than if you had an actual tenant / business, it’s some income.  If the group that organizes this is set up as a charitable organization, you may be able to write off some of the difference for reduced rent (not sure about that part, but I would imagine).
• It keeps people looking at your space, noticing it, and thinking of it as a place where people sell stuff.  Again, basically free advertising.
• Reduced graffiti.  This one takes slightly more explaining.  From what I’ve seen, totally empty / basically abandoned store fronts get tagged pretty quickly.  Ones with “For Rent” signs get it slightly more slowly, but not much.  Murals almost never get tagged.  My guess is that this is because most people who tag and do graffiti on other people’s property think of themselves as artists (I think of them as jackasses, but that’s a topic for another day), and/or they have some resentment against corporations and/or they see it as much more justifiable to tag something that’s just a blank space than something that’s already decorated in some artful way.  So, my guess is that while abandoned looking store fronts get tagged in a hurry (making the property look worse, incurring costs for clean up, and making it harder to find a new tenant, because who wants to rent a place that looks like it gets tagged all the time / is in a rough neighborhood), ones that have art in the front of them, especially art from local, community artists, would get tagged much, much less.

Additional benefits / reasons these groups should love each other:

• Artist looking for a place to show their work will probably be much more flexible in lease dates.  If the property finds a tenant while there’s art in the windows, the art can be moved out and the new tenant in on basically no notice at all, especially if one art organization manages this for lots of artists and lots of spaces.  In effect the property owners don’t have to worry about losing any potential tenants.
• Without anyone being at the storefront on a regular basis, you might think theft would be a problem. However, I would have a hard time imagining it being too big of a problem, because unlike commodities such as TVs or cell phones or whatever, art’s pretty unique, and it would be hard to get any money out of reselling it without being detected.  Which means theft isn’t very profitable.  A good chunk of the worth of art is identifying who made it, and doing so is basically turning yourself in. And again, you have the fact that I would think most thieves would think it’s more justifiable to steal from a large corporation / store / chain than from a local artist who may well be just as financially hard up as they are.  Plus, if you rotate things through fairly often (once a week maybe, which would still be practically no labor cost), the space will still seem active.  Plus, if people get used to looking at it to see what’s new, people will look more, and probably report a broken window or other damage pretty quickly (another bonus for the property owner – casual strangers watching out for your store).  You could also have a very simple / cheap (maybe even fake for the deterrent factor) security camera pointed at the front window.
• The other obvious use along these lines would be advertising, but there’s lots of reasons this is better.  Basically this part ties back to the graffiti argument.  The only things that get vandalized faster than abandoned store fronts are Bebe ads.  Put some ads in an empty store front and it will look like a 3 year old playing with MS Paint in about 5 minutes.  The property owner might make a couple of bucks off the ads, but they’ll have a much higher liability for having to clean up graffiti later.  Beyond that, who wants to advertise their product in an empty store front?  Doesn’t really give the impression that most advertisers  want to get across about their product.  And, again, people tend to (at least consciously) tune out ads and/or purposely ignore them, where as art that’s new on a weekly basis would draw attention (I think).

Really, all you would need to get this going would be one or two people with a phone and the numbers of some local artists (or galleries that have artists they’re turning down) and some local property owners (and those number are already in lots of the store fronts).  The artists get exposure and potential sales, the landlords get at least some rent they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten and get it on a very flexible basis.  I would think there could be very low overhead / middleman costs, especially if a group like Intermedia Arts, or the Walker, or MIA (would seem to fit perfectly with their “Foot in the Door 4” exhibit), or MNartists.org, or Artspace were the ones to set it up, with a relatively low commission being charged on each work sold.

There could definitely be things I’m missing here as I’m neither a property owner nor involved in the business of selling art, but it seems like a win-win for everyone involved to me.  And really, it could be done any time, it just seems like there’s a lot more opportunity and need on both sides of the deal when the economy’s down.

This is a part of the dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

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After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to go tailgating.  Okay, not that early, it was an 8:00 PM game, but the point here is we went tailgating, and Parker got things started off right.

Does anyone else ever wonder if the beer (Land Shark) was named after this really old Saturday Night Live skit, and for that matter, if they had this particular clip in mind when they got naming right for the stadium where the Dolphins play?

No? Just me? Okay, moving on with tailgating then…

A few hours of tailgating later, night falls, and we learn that Parker can apparently hold his beer substantially better than Sinclair.

Yes, Parker was also standing on the car.  Life lesson?  Never buy a used car that was a rental.  Ever.

So, it was getting closer to game time, and we decided to head into Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium, up the giant spiraling corkscrew ramp, which gives a pretty good view of the tailgating festivities.

Now you may be saying, “Kearn, those last two pictures don’t have Parker in them at all, and tailgating seemed to go by rather quickly.”  Did I mention we were tailgating, and I was drinking?  Good, now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point out that arepas may be the best drunk food ever.  It’s like you took cornbread, but made it into a sort of pancake form, and then once that was cooked, you heated it up on a grill with cheese (um, a kind that’s white, I have no idea which kind) between two of these cornbread pancake things until it was all gooey and warm.  Delicious.  They serve them at Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium.  Anyway, after that delicious break, we made it into the stadium, and back to Parker.  Luckily we left ourselves plenty of time to get to our seats.

“To be in the Hawkeye section, yes.  And to be on about the 45 yard line on the Hawkeye side, absolutely.”

Now, you may notice that between those two pictures, Georgia Tech went about 40 yards on offense.  This was basically the only time this happened during the game.  This was also basically the only time Parker was watching.  Now, I tend to not be too superstitious, but this was enough to make me convince Parker to stay in my pocket for the rest of the game, thus the lack of more game pictures with him.  Once it was safe again, he came came out to watch some more.

This is a part of the larger dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

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After our time on the beach, Parker and I decided to explore the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall in South Beach.  We were a little slow getting there, as Parker decided to stop for a snack.

And of course the bushes are always greener on the other side of the pedestrian walk way, so, we had to try those too.

I let Parker take all the time he want eating those bushes.  “Aren’t plants delicious Parker?”

“Phew, good.”

“What’s that Kearn?”

“Oh, nothing.”

South Beach – where even the mannequins have implants.

Let it be noted that the store Parker is posing in front of in this picture was selling Hawkeye gear.  And only Hawkeye gear.  No general sports merchandise.  Just Iowa Hawkeye clothes and memorabilia, and nothing else.  In Miami.  There was absolutely no Georgia Tech (the other team in the Orange Bowl) stuff, or any other store like it selling Georgia Tech stuff.  And it wasn’t a sports store that just rotates through whatever team is visiting for whatever game – it was an empty store front on Saturday, it was a full fledged Hawkeye store on Monday.  Apparently word gets out about how well our fans travel.

We had walked a ways, so Parker grabbed another snack.

“And you’re sure you’re okay with just eating plants, right Parker?”

“Oh, good.  I mean, I think we can find you something to drink.  How about that fountain over there?”

So we kept walking down to the end of the block, until finally we found…

After Parker had his fill, we decided to head back to the hotel and relax for a while.  We wanted to be well rested for tailgating the next day, so we decided to turn in early.  I tucked Parker into his little dino bunk…

And we slept with dreams of Hawkeye bowl wins in our heads.

If you haven’t read them before, the previous episodes of the dino saga will help make this make slightly more sense.  Not lots of sense, just more than it would otherwise.

In this episode / series, Parker goes to the Orange Bowl in Miami to see the Hawkeyes play.  My going along is part of why there was that couple week long lull of no posting – planning the trip, going down, being there a few days, coming back, getting my feet back on the ground, not to mention Christmas, New Years, some things shifting at work, and just generally having needed a bit of a break.  At any rate, I’m back now.

Also, I’m breaking this episode into 3 parts (this is the first, as the title would indicate) because:

1. There are lots of pictures.
2. There are basically 3 distinct stories.
3. These posts take for freaking ever to make, so I want to stretch it out a little bit and make the effort for each a little more manageable.

The third segment is a little short for reasons I’ll explain in that post, so that one’s more like half a post compared to the other two.  As a bonus though, there will also be one non-Parker, non-dino post of Miami stuff after the third as well.  So, really, it like 2 and 2 half post about Miami.  So, anyway, let’s get started, shall we…

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As it turns out, Nessie has an in with the BCS people and helped them decide that Iowa should go to the Orange Bowl in Miami so she could see Parker, instead of sending Iowa to the Fiesta Bowl.  Apparently Nessie doesn’t do well in the desert, being a lake creature and all, and it turns out that Plesiosaurs have a surprisingly large say in the BCS selection process.  Who knew?

So, when we heard that Iowa was headed to Miami, Parker decided that we needed to go.  Sinclair stayed behind to hibernate.  Because dinosaurs hibernate, I guess.  That or he’s just lazy and still moping about not being able to find Minne.  Who knows?  He has his moments of being a rather surly fellow, but I think mostly it’s just the cold and dark weather getting to him, cold blooded and all.

So, Parker and I got our tickets and flew down to Miami a couple of days before the game.  The TSA is surprisingly permissive with dinosaurs.  Apparently they’re a well connected bunch.  Anyway, as soon as we got to the Miami airport, we decided we should go find the hotel, settle in a little bit, and then go see what South Beach has to offer.  Without thinking, I had let Parker do some of the planning, like the car…

Also, it turns out Parker packs like a Druish Princess.

And he fit in pretty well in the hotel lobby while they were taking the bags up, too.

Once we got up to our room, Parker decided to check out the view.

As you can see, I pack slightly lighter than Parker, but I still had room for swim trunks and sandals, so, we headed to the beach, at top dinosaur speed, to see if we could find Nessie.

The lifeguard flashed a mirror a few times in Morse code to signal to Nessie for us.

After we sat on the beach chairs for a while and tried to talk with Nessie as best we could from that distance, Parker got a little restless and wanted to play.

Two hours later…

“Hmmm, Parker, would you like to play on a little bigger sand castle?  I think I see one over there you might like, and it doesn’t look like anyone else is playing on it right now.”

“Sure, where?”

“Right over there…”

“Wow!!!” … running….

“Oh, you know what else we should do? …”

Parker was a little miffed at me after that, so I put the camera away for a while.

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As a side note, how often do you see a post with references to Space Balls, Moby Dick, Baywatch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Monty Python, and an obscure Sesame Street record all in the same place?

I’ve been collecting links for this one for a while, though admittedly I still haven’t really come up with any particularly cohesive argument about it, more just presenting it as something to think about.  The idea/argument/trend/anti-trend is what’s referred to as Free Range Kids.  Basically it’s  the counter to the current trend towards “in the world we live in, you just can’t be too careful, especially when it comes to kids”.  Free Range Kids would tend to say that it’s probably okay if you let your kids go outside and play without an adult hovering over them or gps enabled tracking bracelets strapped around their ankles.  As many others have said it better, here’s a few links:

• Lenore Skenazy, the woman who sort of kicked off the movement/firestorm, introducing it in her own words here.  She also had a blog here.
• Here’s a more lengthy interview with her on Salon.com (via Boing Boing)
• A more local take with a few links to other stories.

The comment sections (where applicable) tend to be interesting for the mix of adults fondly remembering wandering and exploring as a kid, and cynics assuring anyone that doesn’t hover over their child that the child will end up dead or a heroin addict.  They tend to get pretty fierce, even by internet standards.  A few more articles for the sake of the comment sections here, here, and here.

Discussions of free range kids tends to draw to the surface quite a few pretty hot button issues/debates, such as:

• It takes a village to raise a child vs stranger danger.
• At what point is society allowed to step in and tell someone how to raise their children?
• How marketing and the news media / cable / cop dramas affect our view of society and how we interact with it.
• The sliding scale of how okay people are with letting children roam vs the size of the city / percent of nearby neighbors that the parent knows.
• The affect of two parents working outside the home, and therefore there being less adults at home during the day as a default safety net.
• How being very protective of children both responds to and creates a culture of distrust / lack of community / suspicion of everyone / (stretching a bit) a culture of fear and isolation.
• Have you ever walked past a playground and glanced over and smiled at the joy of children at play?  Have you gotten a dirty/suspicious look from a parent on the playground for doing so?
• Keeping children young and helpless forever so parents can always be important.

There also seems to be some parallels in here for that other major freedom vs safety debate of our times – terrorism.  How much should we modify our lives and how many freedoms should we give up to try to foil the terrorists / pedophiles?  How does the media affect our perceptions of these threats?  How much should the parents / government always be the ones to make decisions for what’s best and safest?  How much does one lead into the other, with the government replacing parents as an authority figure that can tell us what’s safe?

Pleasantly trippy, though simple, Lego illusion.

Cute and clever diorama and detail (via The Brothers Brick).

Using Legos to mend walls.

Lego candles.

An absolutely enormous / insane (read: awesome) Lego aircraft carrier.

Nathan Sawaya makes all sorts of amazing Lego sculptures / art (found via Makezine).

A great/bad pun in Lego:

Attack of the Second Amendment from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo. Via Gizmodo.

On the slightly more serious side, here’s a really interesting story from The New York Times about Lego as a company and the changes they’ve made and where they’re heading (via Kottke).  As much as I fully realize that things like that have to happen to keep the company afloat, it kind of makes me sick too.  I’ve bought Legos for birthdays and Christmas in recent years and each time it seems like they get more and more expensive, with almost no really little sets, and they’re so specialized that it’s hard to build much out of them aside from what’s on the front of the box.

I remember quite fondly Lego sets I had when I was little (okay, I still have some of them) that came with multiple sets of instructions for things to make out of them, and also had things pictured on the box that you could make which there weren’t instructions for, just to get the creative juices flowing a little more.

I sort of credit the old Lego sets with a lot of the way I look at thing (perhaps I had this view before I got Legos, and they just happened to fit in well, who knows).  Mostly, putting pieces together, taking things apart and rebuilding them, just seeing how things work, and being willing to mess with them a little.  I often explain my interest in computer programming in these terms – programming is Legos for adults.  (Legos are Legos for adults too, but we’re going for a metaphor here people.)  In programming, especially object oriented programming, you have all these different pieces you have to fit together and line up just right, and when you do, you have built a new toy to play with from the parts you had.  And you can combine them in all sorts of ways, and swap out pieces here and there, and build whole new things no one else has thought of yet.  And when you’re done, you can reuse it all and not have a mess.  And the building that happens is a mix of building with your hands, and planning it out in your head as you go, and adjusting as you run into problems.  In an overblown metaphoracal sense, Legos are life.

So, in closing, here’s a great, very simple Lego ad campaign (via Swiss Miss) that’s the way I like to remember them.

Another really good, relaxing, mellow song that’s been stuck in my head lately. Love the use of horns and strings.

The word of the day is kerfuffle.  Say it with me now: kerfuffle.

There’s a few artists out there who make really cool 3D looking drawings with sidewalk chalk using perspective.  Here’s a sampling of them, most of which seem to be by Julian Beever or Kurt Wenner.  Julian Beever also has an online portfolio here, and Kurt Wenner has one here (though it’s unfortunately flash).  Edgar Mueller also has some really cool bigger pieces- his site is here (a little hard to navigate, but worth it), and another small sampling of his work here.  There’s also a few by Manfred Stader here. Really cool stuff all around.

Here’s a CBS interview with Julian Beever about his work that gives some more details about it all:

Yep, it all washes away.  Sort of reminds me of Peter Donnelly.

Here’s a making of video for one of Julian Beever’s works:

And a making of for one of the Edgar Mueller ones:

And here’s a youtube channel with a few more.

I wonder if there’s any time lapse videos out there of the works being slow washed and worn away?

Perhaps it’s just because I’m a big marching band geek, but this video (youtube) is about 8 shades of awesome (though grumble gumble about not being able to embed it).

Also, at 2:23 – hell yeah bass, go sousies.

Via a link on a friend’s facebook page.